Question

I want to derive the place (string) and the amount (float) from a string using regex in PHP.

The target string would be formatted like this

7 Eleven Manly West 10.00

The place is a string of a-z, A-Z, 0-9 and hyphen characters.

The amount is in money format as so – 10.40 – 10 dollars and 40 cents. The amount can also be a negative, and doesn’t retain a zero (4.30 – 4 dollars and 30 cents).

Answer 1

you don’t have to use regex if you know it will always be formatted like this where the amount will be the last part. You can do

$data = explode(" ",$inputstring);
$amount = array_pop($data);
$place = implode(" ",$data);

but if you really want a regex try something like

(([a-zA-Z0-9]+\s)+)(-?[1-9][0-9]*\.[0-9]{2})

You can then get the place in the first back reference and the price in the 3rd